Avantgarde Audio Intros enChord – ‘A 21st Century MIDI Control Super Instrument’

Avantgarde Audio released this promo for enChord, a new app for Lemur on the iPad that the developer describes as ‘a 21st century MIDI control super instrument”:

enChord is a truly innovative application that lets you design harmonically perfect chords using all of the most popular music scales in the world with the assistance of one-touch chord progression analysis and scale modulation analysis, for you to either compose music, perform music (using the included innovative PadBoard and TileBoard MIDI controllers), or BOTH by utilizing this completely innovative when it comes to user-friendly interaction for performing and writing music.

The MIDI controller app combines dynamic ‘chord-organ’ functionality, music theory and some interesting user interface ideas.

Features:

  • NoteBoard, a 108 “note canvas” for chord and chord progression design.
  • ChordLibrary, 5832 immediately available chords… with direct audition.
  • ScaleLibrary, dozens of musical scales
  • Real time, generative scale “mood” audition
  • One-touch chord analysis and chord progression suggester
  • One-touch scale analysis and scale modulation suggester
  • ChordBank for chord storage and direct chord audition of your stored factory or modified chords on every session
  • ModBank feature: you can store your scale modulations and go back to your base scale at any time
  • TileBoard: a surface of harmonically perfect “tiles” for performance with no wrong notes; dynamic self-regeneration-capable multi-touch instrument with expression, channel aftertouch, and velocity control for each harmonic Tile for real-world expressivity.
  • PadBoard, a dynamic pad-based board (ala MPC) that is dynamically re-built according to the user-selected scale
  • MIDI channel selection enabling you to control up to 3 different external instruments
  • enChord is compatible with all DAWs that support MIDI
  • enChord is compatible with all hardware and software instruments that support MIDI

enChord is being sold via eBay for $29.

Update: As noted in the official video, “Many will try to imitate enChord very soon. Guaranteed. I will sue them all so I can fund future development. : )”

The developer adds, via the comments, “I honestly thought the smilie right next to the comment in the video spoke for itself.”

This was not clear to some readers, so we’ve updated the headline and added this note to help clarify it.

97 thoughts on “Avantgarde Audio Intros enChord – ‘A 21st Century MIDI Control Super Instrument’”

  1. Multiple innovatives, super, no wrong note, lots of perfects, one-touch, dynamic, user-selectable, real-world expressivity, dynamic self-regeneration-capable multi-touch instrument (wtf is that) –

    Chords for dummies? Why not just algorithmically generate music and only provide a Start button, that also doubles as a super easy-to-use Stop button once the music is playing.

    The more ‘art’ is removed from music by automation, the more boring and formulaic it becomes.

    1. Hi! This is Avantgarde Sound. Thank you for your comments. I would like to add that enChord is a tool that helps you shape the overall harmony of your composition or performance, and it also lets you play them using TileBoard and PadBoard (its built-in MIDI controllers). enChord will not make music for you, but it will assist you in the sense that you won’t have to memorize the thousands of possible chords, modulations and scale variations. enChord helps you do all this modularly and it’s strictly dependent on user interaction and, most importantly, user personal taste. This is done in the fastest way possible via enChord’s hands-on UI where any complexity happens under the hood. Users require only 1 or 2 taps for most actions. As they say: “touching is believing”. Best musical wishes for 2013!
      Avantgarde Sound

    2. This app seems cool and interesting. The only arrogance I’ve noticed is all the negative people trying to bash the developer. Hats off to the developer for being positive and focusing on his musical passion in the face of ridiculous people whose only contributions to the world are negative criticisms.

  2. Neat concept, but wow…. get over yourself.
    There is nothing fundamentally new here, and I think the customers would be better served if he focused on making a better product instead of hanging out with lawyers.
    On the other hand, maybe he was making a joke. Either way, it rubs me wrong and I’m probably not the only one.

    1. Hi Chudgoo,
      Thanks for that. Yeah, we can leave it on “neat concept” if you like. We are receiving many positive comments from actual users. I guess the title of the article deviates attention to “drama” or “flame wars” instead of simply focusing on what enChord does or does not do. But rest assure the only intention for us is to share our approach to music composition and performance in a sustainable way: enChord represents such effort. If the video is too “arrogant”, no problem, my apologies. That wasn’t the intention, though perhaps you could realize there’s definitely novelty in enChord’s approach, and its immediacy is real. I invite you and all to read about enChord’s full feature list here:
      http://www.ebay.com/sch/avantgardeaudio/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=

    1. Wow, a video about a generative music application (in the widest sense of the word) that is banned because it allegedly contains copyrighted musical content … The mind boggles.

    1. Hi there. This is Avantgarde Sound. Cheers! Thank you for you comments. I believe Sugar Bytes products are great (big fan here!) but perhaps a closer inspection could indicate a lot of differences. Consequence is a plugin (a great one), enChord’s approach, on the other hand, is that of a MIDI controller with modular harmony design capabilities and two built-in MIDI controllers for direct interaction/performance. I honestly think both products don’t really get in the way of each other. Quite the contrary, but yes, just my humble opinion. All the best for 2013! Avantgarde Sound.

    1. I bet your the “creator” of this, and if it didn’t require handing over money I’d rip this thing open and see how much stolen code was behind it, because I highly doubt that having never put out any other Lemur templets you spent a lot of time opening up other templets to see what’s under the hood. That being said can you really say your use of in-the-box objects is really so unique that you have rights over them? I sure hope all of these manufacturers don’t go sueing every lemur user for creating more useful control interfaces for their products… Don’t sue me Moog, PhattyControl is helpful and I there are people who feel the same as me. “Long Live Open Source Control”

  7. I guess the video is blocked by the GEMA because he used a recording of Mozarts Figaro in the intro. So first he will be sued by those. Then he gets sued by all the A-Capella-groups naming themselves “Enchords”. And lastly he is sued by all who are already offering similar products: 7Aliens’ Harmonizer, Cognitone’s Harmony Navigator and Synleor’s Harmony Improvisator. 😉

    1. your guess is wrong.. Mozart’s music is old enough to be considered “public domain”, which means it is free to be used by anyone…copyright rules no longer apply.

  10. This is one of the most unwatchable demo vids I have ever seen. And I’m not just talking about the shaky-cam-bad-focus thing. Here’s this huge palette of chords and scales. But we don’t really get a demo that shows the muscle or abilities of the software. I’m going to admit I’m feeling a little “hater-ish”. So let me temper it.

    From what I can see, this could be an interesting way to teach/learn scales, chords, and chord progressions. I also welcome any technology that might help music makers break out of the boring harmonic rut that many of them are in. However, I don’t get the sense from this video that the developer fully understands what is in his software. He practically admits he is a lazy-a$$ who doesn’t want to learn this stuff. One can hope that he consulted some folks who know things to help him.

    Also, to claim that all this is innovative is a bit of a stretch. I’ve seen a few applications that allow scale selection, and give a selection of chords to go along with it.

    What would make this more interesting is if the chords were organized in groups– i.e., some chords are native to the scale (this it does), other little chord “strands” could pivot out of key and back. Though it would take some work to develop systems for every scale, it wouldn’t be impossible to create a really interesting set of harmonic rules. So that when a give chord is selected, other chords could be color-coded to show which chord would work as the next chord in the sequence.

  11. this thing is actually pretty cool lemur template and making it looks like it took lots of time and thinking while avoiding bugs… good work, I tryed many ipad controllers and few of them I like very much but this is much more useful.

    I just might try this, even tho this would be great for free Liine Lemur premium content but I guess man has to live from something and 30$ is not much for such a fun tool to have.

  13. Sounds like haters have crawled out under their rocks after a long weekend.get out of moms basement and for a walk after you go sit on toilet for a while. Great app!!!

    1. Oh so it is you! How is threatening lawsuits right from the get-go doing for sales on your ripped off idea? Your right I am a hater of people that tell me they are going to sue me before they can even produce something that would make me want to buy their product. You got it backwards my friend, and with how small the music community really is I don’t think this is a good way to get very far in it, most professionals will just laugh at you and walk the other way

  14. jimmy hotz came up with this idea 20 years ago and had a controller made by atari for it – the hotz translator

    better keep those laywers handy. jahaha

  16. iSHred is nothing like this. It’s a chord database like Polychord but with more positions. Insane dev rantings aside this very useful if you want a chord / scale catalogue.

  17. It’s kinda sad that this guy’s so unprofessional, because the app looks interesting.

    I won’t support a developer who starts by making legal threats out of the gate.

  19. Good grief, you people have no sense of humor. Get over yourselves, there was even a smilie [ 🙂 ] at the end of his comment to indicate that it wasn’t serious. Also, Mozart’s music is long out of copyright.

    2. Even if he was kidding, the tone of the whole video was one of arrogance…which lead me to believe he probably wasn’t kidding. That said, humor is relative, and I didn’t find it funny.

  21. Hi all, This is Avantgarde Sound (Avantgarde Audio).

    First of, best musical wishes for 2013 to all synthtopians out there! Some Avantgarde users alerted us on this post by Synthtopia.com, of which we at Avantgarde Sound are big fans since forever.

    While we are not extremely excited about the title of the article :), it is sort of understandable how it was chosen. However, Synthtopia.com usually focuses on technology and the core aspects of new products, thus we could not deny we are a bit surprised about the title. But yes, it’s kind of funny! 🙂 I thought the smilie next to the comment in the video speaked for itself.

    Here’s to Synthhead, Synthtopia, and all synthtopians out there. Wish you all the best for 2013.

    If you have any questions or additional comments, please let us know through a message in our current sales channel at eBay (we are working in our official website AND better videos, porting to other platforms… you know how it is!):
    http://www.ebay.com/sch/avantgardeaudio/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=

    1. Thanks for the feedback. This comment was flagged by the spam filter, because of the use of an eBay URL for your Website URL.. I corrected this for each comment that was flagged.

      1. Many thanks for your reply, and for re-focusing the headline. We tried to contact Elisabeth, and left a message.
        As big fans of Synthtopia, we will be very happy to prepare something with you to compliment your readers and our fellow music-makers. I tried to use the stated feedback form but it keeps failling because “not all data fields are filled” when that is not the case (something on my browser, I am sure). I would guess you could extract our “non-published” email from this comment? Please feel free to drop us a line to work something out together for all synthtopians. We are also preparing a new (hopefully better :)) video, etc… Thanks again, and all the best for 2013.

    2. Isn’t one of the first rules for the Apple Developer agreement that you don’t circumvent the store and sell in another store? If you happen to have a copy in iTunes, it should be yanked by Apple. Technically, it is also possible to get your dev certs yanked if you stocked up on $99/yr developer certs and are filling out your 100 devices/year by selling directly on ebay. I don’t care about this myself, but you are doing it all wrong. 🙂

      1. Hi, Thanks for the comment. You are overall correct; however, enChord is not an iPad app just yet (working hard on this atm), enChord’s first fully working prototype was implemented using Lemur’s development framework. This version can be acquired by Lemur users already via eBay and Paypal and thus support enChord’s further development and porting to other touch platforms (such as iPad standalone, in which case Apple would “control” the selling channel). Cheers!
        Avantgarde Sound

  22. It’s unfortunate viewers have had such a negative reaction to the developer’s facetious remark.

    If you watch the video without prejudice enChord does appear to be an interesting application. enChord may not necessarily be an “innovation” but to describe the tone of the video as “arrogant” is uncharitable as it only contains the usual amount of marketing hyperbole.

    Obviously the developer has put a great deal of work into enChord and it’s a shame he’s been undone by a bad joke.

    1. It seems more like he’s bragging that everybody is going to copy his ‘completely innovative’ app and that he’s planning on suing them when they do.

      I’m not sure what’s facetious or even tongue-in-cheek about that.

      1. Here is the GAME… Selling something virtual online
        Here are some of the RULES…. Dont supply ammo for people to shoot you dead with

    1. Hi, This is Avantgarde Audio/Avantgarde sound. I would like to clarify this comment above was not made by us. Here is our actual statement: “First of, best musical wishes for 2013 to all synthtopians out there! Some Avantgarde users also alerted us on this post by Synthtopia.com, of which we at Avantgarde Sound are big fans since forever.

      While we are not extremely excited about the title of the article , it is sort of understandable how and why it was chosen. However, Synthtopia.com usually focuses on technology and the core aspects of new products, thus we could not deny we are a bit surprised about the title of the article. Not excessively Synthtopia-like.

      But yes, it’s kind of funny! I honestly thought the smilie right next to the comment in the video spoke for itself. No offense taken. Here’s to Synthhead, Synthtopia, and all synthtopians out there. Wish you all the best for 2013.

      If you have any questions or additional comments, please let us know through a message in the forums we are big fans of (such as KVR!) or through our current only sales channel at eBay (we are working in our official website AND better videos, porting to other platforms… you know how it is!):
      http://www.ebay.com/sch/avantgardeaudio/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs= 1&_from=&_ipg=

      I also posted more or less the above at synthtopia.com, but I guess “moderation” needs to authorize its publication.

      Cheers all!
      “

      1. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for listening and responding to reader comments. We updated the post to clarify your intentions on the quote in question.

        It’s clear from reader feedback, that a more concise demo video would help people understand your product. If you make an additional demo video, let us know via the feedback link at the top of the site. We’ll be glad to share it.

        FYI – your original comments got caught by the spam filter. It’s rare for comments to get flagged as spam in error. Usually the problem is just the opposite – too much spam slipping through. I apologize for the inconvenience.

        The comments were flagged as spam because you’re using an eBay link as your website URL when you comment. That’s something that’s very common with spammers, but very unusual for legitimate users. I found the comments and manually approved them.

  26. Aside from the palpable arrogance of the developer, everything about this app is pathetic. If you can’t match a scale to a chord, and you need the aplication to randomly play notes from a scale so that you can get a sense of it… you are an idiot and ought not be writing music. Seriously. If you need or use this: you are not bright and dishonor the art of music, if you developed this: you dishonor our art of music. We are talking about the most rudimentary knowledge and the type of work that a musician would want to engage in as a matter of creation. A musician would not want an application to demonstrate or propose in the manner of a vending machine.

    This is completely antithetical to what being a musician is and would what they want or need. I only hope rapid failure as this type of application is actually the enemy of music and musicians.

    1. I’m all for ways that non musicians can make music-why shouldn’t they be able to have fun too?
      Are you somehow threatened by that?

      Agree with all the comments about the demo video and the arrogance, and am not at all interested in this type of app, but why put it down if some people think it is cool?

      Although, I don’t know if those people are the ones who are going to spend $50 on Lemur and then $30 on this….

    2. That’s just very small minded.
      If the difference between you and non-musician can be bridged with a 35 dollar lemur template you aren’t a real musician. Scale and chords knowledge are handy things but they don’t make you musicialy superior. It’s your ears and picking what sounds best. If this template lets you get new sounds because off the scales and chords ( wich obviously you can’t know all off them), you still need to organize the notes yourself. Almost all modern pop music is based on blues and dixieland (jazz) , both were played by real musicians with very limited music theory who could complete express them self. I don’t have less respect for people who don’t know the diatonic scales then those who only compose in it.

      1. Machinedrummer: Not small minded at all. In fact, it is the opposite of myopic. If you’d like to dabble in music as a hobby… study it a bit. That is where the enjoyment comes from. I find it repugnant that this tendency towards democratization of art is destroying our art. Now imbeciles can post their work and pat themselves on the back while being lauded by equally imbecilic friends. Creating and selling this type of crap is an insidious way to make money capitalizing on dilettante-dreams while demeaning and devaluing music. The same thing has happened with photography visual art and literature and this kind of thinking, intellectual laziness and tech development are part and parcel of their demise.

        If you mean “completely express themselves” you are also incorrect. Studying only through emulation hardly qualifies as “completely expressing themselves”. Now… these people you refer to become quite adept at copying a style and merely operating in a very limited style… but music is much larger than that.

        And “new sounds”? What does that mean? None of these are new sounds and the fact that the idiot friendly interface is programmed to do default actions for the user for you is proof of that.

        I am no luddite and work quite a bit in electronic music as well, but this to me demonstrates the worst use of technology because it ultimately denigrates the thing it claims to promote. I think that anybody who relies on this is pathetic as are those wishing to cash in on it.

        This is no different than the online resume generators that insert appropriate parts of speech using certain buzz words. Does one then pat themselves on the back as a writer because the algorithm spat out a coherent document?

        1. Don’t get me the wrong, I don’t think this template is gonna change the face of music. it’s very simplistic an can in no way help to create complex harmonics insight needed to make bebop jazz or classical music, wich i am guessing is your kind of superior music?
          It might be your opinion that complexer harmonics = better music, and that is your right but you can’t project this on the world announcing to everyone that this is the only objective truth about music. Looking down from your high and mighty chair on all those who want to make music without the “proper training”.
          Music is older then language, in fact they believe that singing was the way of communication until some 100000 years when language came along. If this doesn’t make it public domain…..
          Music is something almost everyone can enjoy, that’s alot of different people, thats alot of different tastes. Trying to put your taste above the rest is as ridicouless as saying you have the most beautifull child in the world and all other childeren are hideous as a fact.

          We live in the internet age and yes this gives you acces to alot of mediocre stuff but also to alot of different stuff. There is no small group of full-of-themself people that dictate what music has to be. No, everyone has the choice to look up any kind of music they like. This is a good thing for music “freaks” like myself. Yes alot of people make and go listen to “easy listening” and “hype” music but that has been something of all ages.Their musical experience is not infirior to yours, they probably get more enjoyement out of singing along with justin bieber then you will ever have. Not everyone gets the same satisfaction out of studying “intellectuall” material in music. And that’s the beauty of it, you don’t need to understand the theory to enjoy the music. For myself knowing how stuff works can give extra pleasure to the experience but sometimes can ruin it.

          You have this crazy view of this world where everyone who tries to make music wich is not by your standards, knows his music is crap and only makes it for the sole purpose of monotizing it.
          Now there is alot of music on radio and tv that I don’t like and I find moneygrabbing, but making that line between those who know “true music theory” and those who don’t and only do it for money is ridicouless.
          In fact I believe more people make music out of enjoyement of making it then for the money, and the internet has giving them a portal to share their love for music. They don’t make music to impress you.

          All music is based on a combination of emulation and mutation. Everything is build upon what came before it even if it is a move against it. The 20th century dream of modernism has passed. Actually the only thing that came close to creating “new” music has been the electronic music scene, from Raymond Scott to Pierre Henry, or the philips research lab in the netherlands or the music concrete of Daphne Ora. These people didn’t rely on complex harmonic structures, they modulated the very sound instead and emulated the musical structure of populair music. And in the same way the early blues musicians did the same, they all used similair chord progressions but the expression is different. The weight of what they did can not be described in theoretical intellectual text, it can only be felt.

          There is no absolute qualifying value you can give to music, it is not property of the rational mind and can’t be weight in absolute numbers. You can expand music with rational musical theory but it is the intuitive mind that dominates what makes music good.

          Why do you even care about other people making music. Listen to the music you like.
          Looking down on people usually doesn’t lead to a fulfilling life …….

  27. What’s happening it seems to me that the developers are absolutely open not in the least bit arrogant, aside from a little humour, avantgare audio have answered all questions in the above comments for what seems to be a handy cord generator, bad video or not where’s all this hate coming from?

  29. I think the idea needs simplyfying and the interfece decluttering to make it more playable but apart from this it is something i may buy if i don’t just go with abletons push

  30. Text speak can be very hard to decipher the true intention, I retract MOST of my negative statements. When trying to sell something you may want to do a little coddling of your potential customer base rather than sueing sarcasm, especially when you are an unknown developer that is trying to make a name for your self. Hopefully you and any other potential developers out there learned a little something from this…

  31. I would buy this for 2.99$ at the VERY MOST. I understand a lot of work may have been involved.. but was it a missprint for 29$ Thats

  32. My comment it to Mr AvantGarde Audio. There is quite a lot of “prior art” in computers that create music and use knowledge of harmonies and music theory, and this forum certainly knows it, which is why you need to go much further in disavowing the threat to sue everybody.

    In China, popular apps get cloned by competitors within days, which is reprehensible, frustrating and impossible to litigate. But in North America and Europe, you could sue someone who made an obvious clone of your app.

    Don’t say “I was just kidding, I won’t sue anyone”. But you do need to say something specific about the lawsuit threat, and say that you know you can’t sue over theory and harmony computing in prior art, nor sue apps that are significantly different from your own.

    You have to do better than “it’s kind of funny! I honestly thought the smilie right next to the comment in the video spoke for itself. No offense taken”. Instead of “No offense taken”, say “I apologize for the offensiveness, even though it was from an out-of-context quote”, or something like that.

  33. The Trolls having taken over here. I need this for windows and I would also like it if you could use it without a touch screen.

    2. If you think that pertinent evaluations that run contrary to your own narrow beliefs is trolling, then you are the type of narrow minded fool for whom this piece of software is intended: those not prone to learning anything. Why is it for some that when a little circle jerk faction has their conversation is interrupted by pertinent counterpoints, it constitutes “trolling”? Americans (mostly) are so credulous when it comes to doing things that makes them feel equally capable as a seasoned expert: being pathetically amateurish but allowing technology to convince themselves otherwise. And when their weaknesses and fallacies are pointed out to them, they just suffer the greatest in justice and revert back to the default use of “troll”.

  35. This is great. I remember when feedback wasn’t available, let alone an exchange of ideas between the dev and the users. The future is pretty neat sometimes.

    Best of luck to the dev and my fellow synth lovers in this fresh new year!

  37. Maybe all the people who have built similar Reaktor ensembles and Max for Live patches should sue this chucklenut! 🙂

    … the funny thing about this app is that it boasts the users don’t need to know music theory to use it. Yet, how would the user understand what an “M7”, “dim”, etc is in that case, and how to use them? He could just as easily put ancient egyptian hieroglyphics on the buttons.

    1. It’s like the chords they put on autoharps – you don’t need to know them to use it.

      Even for non-trained musicians, though, they make it easier to work with song charts or tabs, play with others and might even help people learn a little theory.

  38. I feel a little bad for the Dev here… Its nice to see people making legitimate software for new platforms. I don’t care if I find this app useful or not, that the video was probably recorded with an iPhone, that he used copyrighted music to demonstrate his software or if there is other software/apps available that do similar things at a cheaper price.

    Its the fact that someone took the time to create, test, and market something that might or is useful to a certain group of musicians.

    If every time developers made a product that was similar, not marketed up to others expectations or was not useful to some core group and was dragged through the mud us “musicians” wouldn’t have any new fancy smancy shit because no one would want to deal with the backlash…

    Now I’m all for creative criticism, however I’m not reading any here in that regard.

    Thanks Avantgarde Audio for taking the time to create another option for musicians to experiment and work with audio!

    my $0.02

    1. and if this app was available in the apple app store I would possibly buy it. Not as a way to create my whole track but as a extra tool for ideas or when I’m stuck not knowing where I should take the track I’m working on… Again its nice people are making tools for us musicians. Maybe its not about what the software seems to be for but moreover what you can use it for that is not its direct application.

      1. Conversely… this is not a tool for “us musicians”… Musicians would not use this, and If you rely on this, you are not a musician. Much like writers would not use “Speak and Spell” or “MadLibs” to when they are suck.

          1. I admit the part about the stick up his ass could be taken as a personal attack, but how is observing someone’s blatant repeated condescending attitude an attack?

        2. Wow, could you just go away or say something constructive. Most of the criticism here has been about the poor choice to use sarcasm in his demo video, wether a “real” musician would use this or not is not your decision to make. You just come around here to spout hot air, don’t you have a hit song to write or something better to do with your time? True all of this can be done with an understanding of music theory, and true not everyone gets to be a famous musician, but I somehow doubt that you are as proficient in music theory as you try to put off, from way up on your high-horse… And if writers don’t need tools to help make things more interesting, how come a little thing called a Thesaurus was invented and is carried at almost all times by most creditable writers?

          1. Kahlil Gibran said that poetry is ““a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.”

            In reality, if a person can’t play their songs on an instrument, it doesn’t mean they aren’t a musician. It means they aren’t an instrumentalist. Some of the greatest composers in the world couldn’t play a zz-top lick to save their life.

            Or let me put it this way:
            Was Miles Davis any less of a musician because he looked at his bandmates and said, “They’re your instruments, you decide what to play on them” ????

            Books are a form of technology. Do you think at-one-time there were illiterate people saying, “Those people who read theory books aren’t musicians, they’re READERS. They haven’t taken the time to play every possibility on their instruments and decide which possibilities are the most musical. They are ruining music by jumping straight to major scales and Dominant 7ths! It’s like Bach wrote the music FOR THEM!”

            Cause I don’t.

            Or maybe piano players got all angry about Guitarists “cheating” by having fourths stacked on top of eachother in such a way that chord shapes don’t change. “Wait, you mean a Dim7 is the same shape in G as it is in Bb? LAME. You don’t even know how to play music. Go home, nerd.”

            Technology is only as good as the guy who’s using it. Herbie Hancock taught me that. This app, and others like it, are natural developments in music as music moves away from traditional instruments and interactions. It makes more sense that young electronic musicians DON’T learn the piano. It’s outdated. It’s poorly-organized. It requires a lot of effort and can potentially damage your hands. If I were 20 years younger, I would have played a midi sequencer too.

            signed,

            Jazz Pianist of 12 years

  39. I just bought enChord. OMFG, Avantgarde Sound is not kidding here, enChord is already a game changer for my harmony shaping adventures!! Best 29 bucks I have ever spent! Looking forward to their Windows 8 version and even the iPad standalone version. Only suggestion from me is: IGNORE THE TROLLS, and keep going!!

  40. Hey, I have got a similar tool! It gives me access to so many chords, and all I have to use are my fingers. It can be used to power any midi synth, meaning infinite sonic capabilities, and best of all, it doesn’t have that computerized sound enchord has! It is called a keyboard.

    1. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not against this type of software. I play electronic instruments, I can hardly be against software. I am also not the type of person to say only people who spent years learning to play can write music, that is a load of bs. However, I dislike how the dev raves about this being a game changer like it is some paradigm shift in the way we will think about music. Music requires flaws to be organic, and this type of software plays chords perfectly, every single time. The brain will instantly recognize that a program is playing the chords, and to me, that will always sound corny and artificial.

      1. What should the developer had said instead of raving about his product; “Hey everyone, I just wasted a few months making this crappy software that does practically what a million other applications can do… This is not a game changer, in fact its a game cheater and will serve to only waste your time as it did mine to create it..”

        Would have that been better? Because as we all know no developer, product designer or inventor ever raves about his newest thing…

        1. Furthermore I believe those who would use this software in its rawest of applications would be cheating themselves out of creativity and growth as a musician.. To me I find it another tool in a growing arsenal of applications that help do certain tasks. Its then up to the creative drive in you to not allow those chords to be static. That means, modulation, automation, effects, splicing and dicing and the gazillion other ways you can add variation and organic elements to sounds and MIDI.

          I hate to say it but all the people who are ripping this software apart and the developer are not looking at the bigger picture… Its a tool not a one stop music making shop, all in one bag thing-a-ma-jig 🙂

          1. Well, I cannot argue with you there. It will certainly have a unique sound, although I do not see it becoming as popular as the sequencer or arp. Both of which, I love.

        2. True, but I am biased, so I thought I should put in my two cents and bitch about how back in my day we used to have analog chord players that took years to learn to play efficiently, unless you were an idiot savant who spoke in notation. I don’t really feel threatened or anything by this software, it could be kind of nifty, in fact. To be honest, I am probably more perturbed by the people on this website who seem to want to use this as an excuse to limit how much they need to understand theory.
          I’m complicated, I know, what with me changing the focus of my butthurt =P

  41. congrats for the dev. (that seems a new dev on the market, with all the respect). caught a lot of attention in this important blog. you people should make more music instead of making troll comments or just follow more synth/music/gear news. thats a pretty acceptable video for a small dev (with all the respect again). of course a better video would help. anyway nothing wrong with the video

  43. Avantage Audio:

    What about windows users who don’t have money for iPad? Are there plans to make VST version in the future?

    All the best

    1. Hi Felipe. We are working hard on the porting to the iPad standalone version. It will be released as version 2 with new features, and current users will have a nicely paved way to upgrade. Then Windows 7/8 support will be next.

  46. Hey! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading through your posts.
    Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with
    the same topics? Thanks for your time!

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